For many of our readers, the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project’s name likely conjures up images of Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe or the Mighty Wonders of Aquasco, Maryland. But on this MLK Day 2017, we wanted to draw your attention to a few items from the collection with direct ties to Dr. King, especially…
Category: Item spotlight
This Is The Most 1990’s Video In Our Collections, And It Is Glorious
Oh, man. Let all that mid-90’s goodness settle in. It’s so perfect, it’s causing a Pavlovian response in my mind where everything tastes like Surge and smells like CK One and is swathed in flannel. The context on this piece is that, in celebration of Baylor’s sesquicentennial year (1995), a fundraising packet was sent to…
Farmers’ Wives, Insane Asylums and Dr. G.W. Truett’s Sermons of the 1940s
George W. Truett was an unrivaled master of the preacher’s art for telling an engaging story, for drawing parallels between the Bible’s cast of characters and his contemporary audience, and for recalling passages of Scripture at the drop of a mic. But even he wasn’t above falling prey to passing along misinformation, and in at…
A January Mystery: What Was “The Promoters” and Who Was Betsy Bolivar?
Sometimes inspiration strikes in strange ways. Take this week’s blog post, for example: while conducting a simple search in the Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections for terms related to the new year – New Year, January, cold as a well digger’s elbow, etc. – I came across a piece from the Spencer Collection of American…
Behind The Image: Crowdsourcing A Mystery Graphic
From time to time, materials cross our desks that we just don’t have much information on, and we like to turn to you, our readers, for help. The above image is one such example, and we hope there’s at least one of you out there who could help us shed a little light on this…
Frozen in Greenland, Celebrating in Green and Gold: WWII Hero Clint Best’s Baylor Ties
If you were to flip to page 40 of the 1948 “Round Up” – Baylor’s annual yearbook – you’d find the entry for senior accounting major Alfred Clinton “Clint” Best. Aside from a notation that he was a member of Alpha Chi and hailed from Waco, you’d have no reason to guess the man…
Spring Break, Spring Cleaning!
Since this week is Spring Break here on the beautiful campus of Baylor University, we’re not going to post a full-on blog today. Instead, we hope you’ll enjoy two “spring cleaning” items of note! 1. We changed the look of our site to give it a fresh appearance for a new season. We’ve been at…
Memories of Floyd Casey Stadium, Courtesy the Baylor University Libraries Athletics Archive and the Grant Teaff Collection
THIS SATURDAY marks a bittersweet moment for fans of Baylor football as we bid farewell to the program’s home for half a century. Floyd Casey Stadium – formerly Baylor Stadium – will host its final home game this Saturday as the Bears take on long-time in-state foe the University of Texas. It’s a big game…
Expectations for the Freshman Class: An Examination of the Annual Catalogue of 1889-1890
Classes roared back into action last week, and the campus of Baylor University is once again full of vitality, excitement, confusion and triumph – and that’s just what’s involved with trying to find a parking space near the library. But seriously, we’re excited to have students back, as it’s their passion for learning that makes…
Item Spotlight – “Female Education: Address Delivered at the Annual Examination of the Baylor University by Col. William P. Rogers” (The Texas Collection – Selections)
Our item spotlight this time around focuses on an antebellum publication that addresses two controversial issues – one directly, one obliquely – from the point of view of a former U.S. Consul to Mexico, an early law professor at Baylor University and, eventually, a Civil War casualty. William P. Rogers William Peleg Rogers (1819-1863) was…